I am a Senior Political Contributor at Forbes and the official 'token lefty,' as the title of the page suggests. However, writing from the 'left of center' should not be confused with writing for the left as I often annoy progressives just as much as I upset conservative thinkers. In addition to the pages of Forbes.com, you can find me every Saturday morning on your TV arguing with my more conservative colleagues on "Forbes on Fox" on the Fox News Network and at various other times during the week serving as a liberal talking head on other Fox News and Fox Business Network shows. I also serve as a Democratic strategist with Mercury Public Affairs.

The Corporate Blackmailing Of America Is Now All the Rage

For the past week, I have watched with amazement as one restaurant chain after another—the very people who peddle the high caloric foods laden with the fat and sugar that have contribute so mightily to the nation’s health problems and the resulting costs—announced their plans to cut back on employee work hours.

Why?

Because an employee who works less than 30 hours a week is not an employee at all for purposes of the Affordable Care Act. Thus, by cutting back work hours for dishwashers, servers, bussers, etc., these franchised chain restaurant operations can skirt the requirements of Obamacare by providing employees with less work.

Leading the way is Papa John’s pizza pusher-in-chief, John Schnatter, who has gone public in a big way decrying the damage Obamacare would do to his business.

So serious is the problem—Mr. Schnatter would have us believe—that he is being forced to cut back working hours for his workers to avoid the crushing costs of providing his beloved employees and their families with a healthcare plan or, alternatively, raise the price of his pizzas by $.14 a pie.

This is a national crisis. I mean, when it comes to buying a pizza, that $.14 is surely a deal breaker!

But let’s keep in mind the choice Schnatter is really offering us.

By avoiding the health care reform law through paying less to his employees as a result of cutting back their hours, Schnatter is only increasing the costs that you and I pick up when his employees—having no health insurance—show up at the emergency room for basic care because they have nowhere else to go. Thus, while Mr. Schnatter is deeply distressed by the notion of taking some responsibility for the health of the very employees who make his business work so that he can earn millions, he is perfectly happy to have you and I subsidize his profits by allowing us to pick up the cost of health care for his workers because he will not.

The result of Schnatter’s behavior—along with the other restaurant owners playing this game—is to leave it to me to subsidize Schnatter’s profits despite the fact that I am not a customer for his pizzas that find to be mediocre at best. I will be left to pay the bills for his employees’ health care needs and, as a result, contribute directly to his bottom line.

Not a bad deal for Mr. Schnatter. He gets to profit from someone like me despite my choice to not spend a dime in one of his restaurants. Nice work if you can get it but hardly what we would typically view as an example of free enterprise.

While this “three nickels a pie” charge would, apparently, be the final straw in driving you into the waiting arms of your neighborhood, non-franchised pizzeria (a pretty good idea if you ask me) it turns out that things might not be so dire for poor Mr. Schnatter after all.

In a brilliant article by Forbes’ own Caleb Melby —by the way, I have never been prouder of one of my Forbes colleagues—Caleb breaks down the real costs to Papa John’s, using hard, cold math to reveal a little truth. We learn, for starters, that the actual cost of the Affordable Care Act to Mr. Schnatter’s business runs much closer to 4 cents a pizza than it does to 14 cents. Could Mr. Schnatter be setting himself up to make a few extra pennies per pie using Obamacare as an excuse or is he simply exaggerating his plight to sell his political narrative?

Certainly, this is not the first time a new cost item has resulted in a small increase in the price of Mr. Schnatter’s product. However, I strongly suspect that it is the first time he has chosen to politicize a cost increase to make an ideological point. As a result, Caleb’s article serves to expose Schnatter for what he really is—an ideologue who would gladly put a metaphoric gun to the head of his employees, using them as pawns in the effort to sell his own political beliefs which, in the opinion of this writer, have no more substance nor taste than the pizzas he peddles. And if he can make a few extra bucks in the process? It’s all good then, right Mr. Schnatter?

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…you idiot freethinker. Rick knows better than you do because he is a mighty LIBERAL – sent from God. There’s something wrong with you if you can’t see the superiority of his views. Laws making people think correctly are required because of people like you.

Rick is a liberal. Rick has a lock on morality. Rick knows better than anyone else. Rick isn’t interested in how others see it. Rick is a liberal, the anointed, the elite, the master race. Disagree and you are wrong. Period.

Maybe, Mr. Tolerant and Enlightened, the Papa John CEO thinks it is more important to make a statement about how HE sees things than to fall in line because you think he ‘should’. Maybe he thinks (correctly) that it is a virtual certainty that instead of expanding health care, the gov. will make a mess and ration shortage? MAYBE HE DISAGREES WITH YOU, MR LIBERAL DICTATOR FOR VERY GOOD REASONS HE WANTS TO DRAW ATTENTION TO. And as I noted elsewhere Papa John’s is probably just doing the same thing other fast food companies are doing quietly. Maybe he’s announcing it so people will grasp the reality of what happens when liberals try to run the world.

I know you won’t get it. Just try for once stepping outside your God d*mned self righteousness and your hauteur about the ills of the world around you. You will be amazed to find that many of what you regard as ills are simply the result of the actions of people who determine what THEY want, not what you think they should want.

Go ahead, rant – they want health care don’t they? They want a decent wage don’t they? If we don’t ‘help’ them… Just like you idiots ‘helped’ a bunch of unqualified people get subprime mortgages so they would fit your vision of home ownership – the ‘good’ that was enforced last time.

Get a clue. And when Obamacare is another version of public education, have the grace to be ashamed. Not that it will matter to the rest of us stuck with it – the liberal vision.

Yes! Let’s do it your way! Let’s let people do whatever they want! Let’s let your neighbor’s dog crap all over your lawn. Why? Because it is what he wants Never mind that it isn’t what you want. Let’s let people decide for themselves whether or not whole ethnics of people should be denied the right to buy food or have a job. Why? Because if the people who control the supply of food and the jobs decide that the don’t like black people, then it should be their right to deny these things for whatever reason they like, correct? And lets’ let airlines decide that women can’t fly. Why? Because if the only airline servicing your town is run by someone who hates women, then that’s his right, yes?

Oh..and not for nothing, I love when people finish up speeches by telling me to ‘go ahead and rant’ and then say that I don’t get it! Awesome!

Come on, Rick, your response is specious. There is a very large difference between protecting people’s rights as they are laid out in the Constitution and managing their lives for them because they are somehow unqualified to do it themselves. No one is talking about ‘doing whatever they want’ where it involves violating the rights of others (the Constitution is colorblind, btw). Banning women from airplanes is a violation of civil rights.

Forcing people into the straightjacket of a conjured-up entitlement that most of them don’t want isn’t even close to the same thing as protecting rights. There are no rights being violated by inaction and extensive rights being violated by requiring participation in Obamacare.

As to racism, you might read Milton Friedman’s classic discussion of the matter in Capitalism and Freedom. Racism is evil – racism is a violation of rights. And you might think about some of the messes liberals have left behind and ‘forgotten’ when reality set in and moralistic preening was no longer fun.

I moved out of a city because of the poor public schools. My wife attended those schools when they were good. The liberals in the seventies saw a great opportunity to Be Right and Moral Publicly and instituted forced busing. Parents with resources moved their kids to private schools. Test scores in the public schools fell like a stone and the schools’ reputation went with them. So for now thirty years, the city’s schools have had a poor reputation (thoroughly deserved) and it is permanent – the best students stay out. No one wants to send their kids to poor schools. Voila! A ruined school district that now fails the people who must rely on it – the ones the liberals were supposedly helping. Did they acknowledge what they had done and go back and do the hard work of rebuilding what they had destroyed? Of course not. They went to Disneyland.

P.S. There is no ‘right’ to buy food or to have a job regardless of race. There is a right not to be discriminated against. This is not a quibble – it’s the heart of the matter. There is a defensible right rooted in Constitutional protections. It’s called the rule of law, as opposed to the rule of clueless liberals.

No one seems to have noticed a key issue – if employees have control of their own HC money, they are empowered to leave poor providers and go elsewhere. That pressure – when it exists – keeps the system from getting entrenched and forces it to benefit he patient/customer

And if Obamacare fails and makes a mess how do you propose to get rid of it? It will be impossible, twice impossible if public service unions get control of healthcare. And we will have a duplicate of the public education system: horrible, out of control, accountable to no one, dedicated to its own interests.

Honestly, Rick, you have a twisted sense of “freedom” that resembles the most egregious aspects of fascism. By keeping my property, I infringe on your right to it, is that right? I’m not letting my dog crap on your lawn by trying to lawfully keep control of my earnings and my health care. Jefferson said it about religion, but I believe it applies to liberty in general to say that if your actions do not pick my pocket or break my leg, they are yours to exercise. Straw-manning your detractors’ arguments in the comments aren’t going to win anything except the smug little boxing match being fought in your imagination.

With all due respect, my opinion is that the article is one side. Why are we surprised people in america have core values, ethics or a strong moral compass. People have been forced into this against their will. Everyone wants people to have health care, but there has to be a better way! I won’t even get into all the things we’re paying for with obamacare that’s plain unethical… while cutting quality care to our elders. Why are we surprised people need time to throw up and process through this? Bottom line, employees are going to pay either way. Their future raises will just be lower than they would have been (less money to spend on entertainment and travel). Domino effect. So, for anyone whose working and thought they were getting free obamacare, guess what? You’re paying… you’ll just be on a budget plan, so to speak. Also, how do you know that Papa John’s isn’t choosing to give bigger raises while he lowers hours? That could be his plan. And, in the same way you and other won’t support those lowering hours, some will choose not to support those who got them into this. Goes both ways.

Business makes its profits on the backs of its employees. The American people are angry with corporations taking a disproportionate amount of the gains made by the work of others. Is it too difficult to share fairly with their employees? Apparently so.

We’ve had four hard years and are not in the mood to be kicked further by the greedy.